The 21st Avenue Northwest neighborhood is the site of another contentious housing disagreement in Ballard. The neighborhood is faced with what they call a “box” style, modern design home replacing a shabby, modified Tudor-inspired house that resembles many of the houses in the neighborhood. The developer, Green Canopy, contends they are designing with the future in mind.
Green Canopy Homes – a south Seattle based company that uses green materials, recycles/reuses, and rebuilds old homes with energy efficient components – has purchased the home residing at 6530 21st Ave. N.W.
GC started in 2009 and has finished or is working on at least 12 projects in the Ballard area, however they have projects throughout the region. About the companies mission their website says,” We want the communities in which we build to be inspired by the work that we are doing. We want the people that we meet and the folks that we do business with to be inspired by the impact that we make both locally and globally.” CEO of Green Canopy, Aaron Fairchild, said, “We really want to be an inspirational builder for resource efficiency and climate change. … we want to change the way the real estate market considers resource efficiency.”
Green Canopy has plans to gut and rebuild the old home to make the designed home they call Gertrude: a modern style 2500 square foot home with four rooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms. The home has a flat roof in the area visible to 21st Avenue Northwest.
The project has been underway for the last two months. Part of Green Canopy’s strategy for inspiration is to connect with the neighborhood in order to get an idea of what they want the new home to look like. They have done this in the past and it has evolved into a program where neighbors pick the color of the home. In addition they also made a blog where project updates are made and neighbors can comment.
Last August GC held a meeting to collect feedback from the neighbors. 21 residents showed up to have a say. Ariel and Adrian Weber, who live across the street from the GC project, were there to talk with developers. They have been living there for six years. Ariel said that what attracted them to the neighborhood was the old Scandinavia craftsmen style homes; something he said is unique to the area.
“If you take the character of the neighborhood away by building houses that don’t match it, you remove the very reason people move there in the first place,” said Weber.
The Webers and the 19 other neighborhood members asked GC to design the home with the neighborhood craftsmen aesthetic in mind. They asked for a pitched roof.
“We started construction and had the community meeting and the community came out very vocal. And that’s ok. It has happened to us in the past. We want to engage with them,” said Fairchild.
However, their say was limited because GC had already obtained the design permits from the Seattle Department of Planning and Development.
Gertrude design by Green Canopy Homes. Photo courtesy of Green Canopy Homes
“We spoke at length with all their representatives and emailed them over 20 emails sharing our thoughts. In response we were told they would review our comments and would provide suggested changes. We were told to be patient. After 2 weeks of waiting we got our answer: They would not be making any changes – and as consolation, we could make house color suggestions. It was a slap to the face,” said Weber.
Anne Siems, has lived in the neighborhood since 1998. She said that she sent numerous emails with examples of Nordic and craftsmen design recommendations to GC, but she said her recommendations were disregarded.
With GC not changing their design, Weber says they are “Building without a conscience.” “Green Canopy Homes builds huge box style modern homes in neighborhoods where they don’t fit. Their plan on our street is to build a flat roof, cereal-box style that gives no consideration to the existing homes surrounding it,” said Weber.
“We asked him [Fairchild] to just blend it with the neighborhood. We asked him to just walk around the neighborhood. Our street and every street around here and --‘what do you see?' There are one-hundred-plus-year-old homes with pitched roofs that are craftsmen style. Build something that blends in with the architecture of the neighborhood, not something that stands out – these things [modern style homes] are eyes sores to the neighborhoods.”
However Fairchild sees the situation very differently.
“We are looking to not build with blinders on. …We realize we have a lot more to lose by not engaging the neighbors and we want to make a difference. When you are making people mad then there goes your mission,” said Fairchild.
Fairchild explained that the house is an ideal opportunity for a developer to demolish and rebuild a three level 3500 square foot structure and because of the location, easily sell it for $1,000,000 plus – a pattern being witnessed throughout the city.
“On 21st street they came out [Neighbors] and we got lots of angry emails and calls. They said it would be an ‘abomination,’ and said ‘you are the problem with what’s happening in Ballard.’ I said to myself ‘any other developer would have leveled it.’”
However, Fairchild said leveling the home is not their mission at all. He said GC’s goal is to rebuild a home that does not exceed the current structure’s carbon footprint. By redesigning and outfitting the home with energy efficient components and future possibility for solar panels, they hope to show developers and consumers a more sustainable development strategy. Moreover, Fairchild explained that diversity is a good thing in neighborhoods.
“We do know that the human eyes likes diversity and yet what we don’t want to do is create contrast in neighborhoods, and in this project I think we missed it in Ballard and created too much community contrast.”
The Gertrude project and all of GC’s projects start with an energy audit. Then they strip and rebuild the home and when they are finished they do another energy audit to determine the change in energy efficiency. They guarantee at decrease in energy consumption.
Fairchild said that the project is only expected to profit $40,000 to $70,000.
So what about the roof? Where's the pitch?
Fairchild said that the roof design is a result of how the DPD does their same day permitting. If developers do it all in one day they save money. Since the rebuild is operating at a very thin margin, Fairchild said GC needed to save where they could, and therefore they were unable to save the pitched roofline. However the new “flat” roof would provide the optimal placement for solar panels and maximize space in the structure. He’s explained that for this project it just wasn’t cost effective to keep the pitch.
“There are utilitarian benefits in a flat roof that respond to the time we live in,” said Fairchild. He said that the roof could provide space for gardens, storage and solar panels.
Responding to the negative feedback from neighbors, GC reacted in a very uncharacteristic way compared to many Seattle developers: They offered the neighborhood an opportunity to buy the property from them.
But the neighbors were only able to come up with about half of the funds. Now GC is moving forward with their plans.
“As you can imagine we were all upset at the defeat. This coming from a company who claims to care about the community and its impact, when in reality only cares about its wallet,” said Weber.
“We are not against contemporary architecture but want something that nods to the houses to the left and right – something that nods to the Nordic heritage that makes a connection to what was there before,” said Siems.
“The market place shows us that everyone wants to buy what I call ‘McDwells,’ and the reality in Ballard is you could build anything and people will buy it because everyone loves these quant neighborhoods and wants to move here.”
From this experience GC told the BNT that they have plans for more neighborhood engagement during the design phase of future projects and before applying for a permit. As for Gertrude, construction continues as planned, and the neighborhood has been asked to pick the color.
“I’ve been so thankful to engage with the community although they were being hostile at times. We believed falsely that you cannot design by community meeting. … If we can let them pick the color, why not let them choose the design? We think if we engage them on the front end then we will be more successful in the end and there will be more civility in future projects,” said Fairchild.
